Sam Chambers, for Splash247, talks about the two commendable things about the calamity onboard the ONE Apus boxship.
Container loss aboard boxship
The ONE Apus boxship suffered the biggest loss of containers seen for seven years when it hit a severe storm cell in the middle of the Pacific 10 days ago.
The battered remains of its boxes on deck shocked readers on Tuesday when the magenta-coloured vessel limped into the Japanese port of Kobe.
Read Also: Storm Wrecks Container Vessel, 1,900 Boxes Lost And Damaged
Commendable actions from ONE
First, the very open communication of the accident – daily updates on a dedicated webpage – brilliant, transparent and, frankly, a shining light for other shadier shipping types to learn from.
Secondly, this is a phenomenon that the industry is going to have to put up with more and more and yet so few shipping leaders discuss what climate change means for daily maritime operations.
Global warming is happening
One notable exception, ironically, is Jeremy Nixon, ONE’s CEO, whose forthright views on the climate emergency facing the planet and shipping, have been aired at many conferences in recent years.
Speaking as keynote at the TOC Asia exhibition last year, Nixon pointed out that growing fierce weather patterns are causing delays for ports and ships around the world, principally in Asia where the number and ferocity of typhoons are growing.
“Global warming is happening,” Nixon said, and this has led to more adverse weather and more cyclones and typhoons rumbling through key shipping lanes. Nixon’s repeated messaging about climate change affecting ship operations needs to be heeded.
Read Also: Additional Information on ONE Apus Container Collapse
Investigation underway
Again, it is way too early to say exactly what happened out in the middle of the Pacific on December 1, but weather experts tracking ONE Apus’s path that day suggest the storm cell it hit could have seen it be hit by waves as high as 16m.
Global warming is creating more freak waves, more ferocious and sudden storms far out to sea. Ship designs – and cargo configuration – of the future will need to absorb these fast changing weather patterns.
The Japanese investigation into the ONE Apus accident needs to be both thorough and far reaching.
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Source: Splash247
